Jack Tibbert opened the door to his dorm room and found an opossum wearing his roommate’s polo shirt. Since a full October moon rode high in the sky, and blood-streaked ichor reeking of fear sweat and opossum funk oozed from the sleeves of the shirt and the bottoms of the pressed and belted jeans splayed across the bed, there could be only one explanation. Eugene Peterson Braen, the most tight-assed, twenty-something, college freshman ever, was a were-opossum.
This didn’t bother Jack as much as it might some people. As a half-breed, biracial cat shifter who’d been adopted by a family of overachieving, shapeshifting foxes, he was used to weird. But why did his roommate have to get were-ed the night before an exam? How was Jack supposed to study, much less sleep, with that thing in the room?
Squealing like a rusty hinge, ‘Possum Gene thrashed inside the thick fabric, trying to claw his way out, but his shoulders were stuck in the collar. As usual, Gene had buttoned his shirt all the way to the top. His polo shirt!
Jack shut the door and dumped his backpack on his bed. “It’s your own fault. Didn’t you ever see The Wolfman? There’s an order to these things. Get naked, then shift. Pillage, then burn. But nooo, you’re too much of a brain to watch horror movies. You’re lucky I’m a nice guy.”
Up close, the stench was eye-watering. Gritting his teeth, Jack yanked the shirt off the bed. Gene tumbled out the bottom, onto the sodden bedcovers, and kept rolling. He landed with a splat on the carpet next to a page of laser-printed photos, righted himself and waddled toward the door.
A flash of silver in one of the pictures caught Jack’s eye. The object curved like the top of a strapless party dress. He snatched the paper off the floor.
Jack had a picture of his adoptive sister Rika Nakamura wearing a silver dress like that. She looked like a star, and she was smiling at him. No, better than smiling—her face glowed like she’d won the lottery and he was the prize. He kept the photo on his phone. How did Gene get it?
He hadn’t. The gray thing wasn’t a dress. It wasn’t even a person. It was a weird silver beehive in a flash-strobed glass case. Jack’s secret crush was safe.
He checked the other photos. The biggest one showed the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the super-sized church overlooking the Catholic University of America. The remaining pictures featured a black metal rose on a wood plaque, and a silver sculpture of a veiled woman’s head.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
Gene growled in response. Jack whirled. The opossum’s head butted the door. His paws tore into the carpet like he planned to dig through the floor.
“Stop it!” Jack lunged across the room and grabbed the opossum by the scruff.
Gene hissed and snapped. Were-spit flew from the corners of his mouth. Jack jerked his hand away. Gene bounced against the door and slid bonelessly to the floor.
“Sorry, man. But were-spit’s contagious.” To humans. Jack wasn’t sure about half-breeds like himself, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Gene didn’t respond. He lay on the carpet like a giant hairball. He didn’t appear injured, but his jaw hung slack, and his ribs weren’t moving. Green fluid bubbled from under his tail. The fetid odor of overflowing restaurant dumpsters filled the room.
“No!” Jack dropped to his knees. “Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead!”
He prodded Gene’s chest. The Nakamuras insisted all their kits, including Jack, learn first aid. But none of his ABC moves worked, and he wasn’t putting his face anywhere near a were’s teeth—even if they did belong to his roommate. His roommate who wasn’t breathing.
He grabbed his phone. There was only one person who could help. Rika was training to become an exo-med—a doctor to the fae and other sapients not covered in the standard medical texts. In addition to studying Pre-Med across town at Georgetown University, she was enrolled in a number of specialized courses not recognized by the American Medical Association. If she couldn’t save Gene...
He couldn’t think about that.
She picked up on the first ring. Her light, musical voice caroled: “This better be good, Cat Boy. I’ve got lab and lecture midterms in Biology tomorrow, and less than ninety minutes of me time before my roommate gets back.”
“Rika, I think I killed my roommate!”
“Oh, Jack,” she gasped. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“It’s not my fault! It was an accident! I picked him up. He spit at me, and I dropped him. Now he’s not moving. He smells dead!”
“Jesus, Jack, I knew you didn’t like him, but murder...” She stopped. “Wait, you picked him up? Gene’s six-two and ripped. You’re barely five-eight on a tall day. That doesn’t compute.”
“Short jokes, now? Really? He’s a were-opossum. Of course I picked him up. He was wrecking the carpet”
“A were-what?”
“Opossum—you know, pointy face, beady eyes, gray fur, naked tail, looks like Jurassic rat. And not breathing. What do I do?”
“Um, wait for him to wake up.”
Jack opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
“Look, you said he’s a were-opossum. He shifted at moonrise, right?”
“I guess. He was human this afternoon.”
“What does he look like now?” Rika asked patiently.
“Like a dead opossum.”
“Uh huh. Say it with me. What do weres do when they die? They...”
“Change back to human. Oh.” And he’d watched all The Wolfman movies a dozen times.
“It’s called playing opossum,” Rika continued.
This was why he kept his crush secret.
“Geez, Jack, you lived in Holcomb Park for months. You never saw an opossum faint?”
“Not close up. Have you seen the teeth on those things?”
“Well, he’s not using them now. Dump him in the shower and close the door. I’ll see what I can find for the smell.” The patter of rapid keystrokes echoed in his ear. “Nothing for opossum, but for skunk you mix a quart of peroxide, a quarter cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of liquid soap. It’s worth a shot.”
This was why he couldn’t let it go. Where would he find a woman who understood how much a part-time cat hated bad smells and immediately help? But before he had a chance to thank her, the opossum’s ribs heaved. He sneezed, blinked, rolled over and resumed digging.
“Gene!”
“He’s up?” Rika yelped. “Already? Then again, he’s a were-opossum. He could be super hungry from the change. Try distracting him with food. Opossums’ll eat anything.”
Not this opossum. Jack tried Gene’s protein bars and his veggies. He tried potato chips. He even tried the slice of pizza he’d been saving for breakfast. Nothing worked.
“Maybe he wants to go somewhere!” She made it sound better than chocolate.
“Ya think,” Jack snarled.
The ghost of his cat tail twitched irritably at the base of his spine. Tonight was everything he hated about college—test stress on top of dick roommate stress compounded by the prospect of extra work and more stress. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could figure out Gene’s problem and save at least part of their security deposit. Then it hit him.
“Crap. The stench is rotting my brain. The Shrine! There was a paper with photos of the Shrine and a bunch of other stuff on the floor by the bed.”
“What kind of photos? Were there any notes? Never mind. I’ll see for myself. See you and Gene at Visitors Parking in thirty. Bring the papers. It’s a clue,” she warbled. “This is going to be fun!”
Fun? Fun! Phantom cat ears pricked. Fun with him?! Jack’s inner tomcat roused and stretched. Suddenly the evening glittered with possibilities. The Shrine and the lecture halls facing it were closed for the night. Between exams and the raw evening breeze, the university mall would be deserted. But he and Rika wouldn’t feel the cold. They’d be snug inside in her clean, warm car—her clean, warm car with the backseat that folded down—all alone.
Grunting in marsupial frustration, Gene tore through another chunk of carpet. Yeah, all alone with a crazy were-opossum. Hell no.
“I’ll lock Gene in the bathroom and meet you there.”
“No, I need to examine him. Weres aren’t supposed to act like this. We have to figure out why the Shrine’s important and how he kept his focus through the change. It could rewrite everything we know about were behavior. That’s what makes this so exciting.”
That’s what made their meet-up so exciting—not him? Jack glared at the phone.
“Sorry, Rika,” he lied, “the exam’ll have to wait. Gene’s too big for my book bag, and I’m not carrying him. He bites. Maybe next month we can borrow a pet carrier.”
“Who said anything about carrying him? Use the leash in your sock drawer. The halter’s adjustable.”
He started to deny it, then stopped. This was Rika. She wasn’t just a foxy chick with a four-point-oh in everything, including the courses that didn’t officially exist. She was a full-blooded shape-shifting fox, what the Japanese called a kitsune, with a black belt in a form of mixed martial arts supposedly developed for ninjas. She once took out a crazed cat sidhe with nothing but a metal tray. Compared to that, what was a little b-and-e in a boys-only dorm at a college she didn’t attend?
A neatly coiled red leash and halter set lay on the bottom of the drawer underneath a package of new dress socks. The socks shouldn’t have been there, either.
“Damn it, Rika, you’re worse than the NSA! A man’s got a right to privacy, especially in his sock drawer. That’s sacred space! How’d you like it if I went groping in your...”
Drawers. Do not go there. By some miracle, his mouth stopped in time. By an even bigger one, Rika didn’t notice the slip.
“I don’t see why you’re getting so upset,” she shot back. “I did you a favor. You should be grateful. Shift happens, Jack, and you need to be prepared. Now are the two of you meeting me at the Shrine, or do I have to come to your room?”
* * *
The Shrine basilica soared above the black asphalt moat of Visitor’s Parking like a mountain fortress, complete with massive, pale stone walls, narrow windows and grim doors straight out of the Evil Overlord handbook. But something had happened when the builders got to the roof. Instead of gun turrets or arrow slits, they capped their stronghold with an enormous blue, red, and yellow beanie in desperate need of a propeller. Jack was half convinced it was an epic university prank nobody knew how to fix.
The newly upscale neighborhood shared the basilica’s goofy vibe. It wasn’t dangerous by Washington, DC, standards. Still, something in Jack’s chest relaxed when he saw Rika’s old Honda parked under the streetlamp directly across from the Shrine’s monumental east portico.
And clenched all over again when she stepped out of the car. She was dressed in black from the crown of her hoodie to the tips of her leather-gloved fingers and the soles of her black-laced dance shoes.
Part of it was jealousy. If brown-skinned Jack stepped out in a hoodie like that he’d be arrested for breathing. The only reason a cop would stop a cute Asian chick with killer legs (not that anybody could see them under those loose knit pants, dammit) would be to ask for her phone number. The larger part, however, was a sinking sense of dread at the thousand different bad reasons Rika might have for dressing like a ninja—a lead weight in his gut that only got heavier when she hauled a backpack (also black) out of the backseat.
Jack spooled Gene’s leash around his elbow to keep “Uber Rat” from taking another kamikaze leap off the curb in the direction of the Shrine. He glowered sternly at Rika to forestall the kitsune equivalent. “What’s in the bag?”
Rika flashed him a smile that made his breath hitch, his heart stutter, and all his tomcat parts sit up and take notice. She hoisted the bag onto the hood of the car, and his brain short-circuited entirely. Her breasts bounced under her hoodie. The woman had killer everything.
She produced a penlight from the backpack. “Study tools. We’re looking at original research here. I could get a grant. Now try to keep Wonder Opossum still. I need to do a visual exam.”
Wonder Opossum. He should’ve known she wasn’t glowing at him. He scowled at the crown of her head as she trained her light on Gene.
The ever-present swish of traffic along Michigan Avenue exploded in a blare of horns. Gene hissed like a leaky balloon and collapsed on the sidewalk. Green opossum poo oozed from his butt.
The timing was perfect. Rika jumped from her crouch and stumbled against the car.
“That’s not dead,” she gurgled. “That’s decayed.”
“You should smell the room.”
“The curse of the five bean brain,” she said, fanning her hand in front of her face.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Five bean what?”
“Five bean brain,” she repeated. “An opossum’s brainpan only holds five beans. Pound for pound it has the tiniest brain of any mammal anywhere.”
“So? Cat brains are pretty small, but I don’t crap over everything when I shift.”
“Because you shift. Born shifters like us go from one form to another without losing consciousness. No matter what we look like, we’re still us inside. Weres change. They become their animal, with all its strengths and limitations. That’s why Gene’s fixation with the Shrine is so amazing. His opossum shouldn’t remember the Shrine exists, much less seek it out—assuming he did. He did, didn’t he? You didn’t drag him here.”
“Trust me,” Jack said drily, “I wouldn’t.”
“So the big question is: Why the Shrine? Well, the first big question. We can’t ask how until Gene remembers how to talk.” She slid the penlight into her hoodie pocket and held out her hand. “Show me the pictures.”
When she put it that way, he was curious, too. Still annoyed—part of him couldn’t shake the feeling were-Gene had simply found a new and improved way of being a jerk—but curious.
“These things are from the Shrine,” she said. “I saw them the other week when I...” When you snuck into my room? Her cheeks darkened as if she heard his thoughts. She hiked her chin and continued defiantly, “...when I took a tour. The Shrine’s a giant art museum. The Madonna is a silver cast of Michelangelo’s Pieta. The flower is Pope Benedict’s Golden Rose, and the crown is the papal tiara of Pope Paul the Sixth. Is Gene religious? Could he have printed these for his devotions?”
“Not a chance. Lack of religion is the only thing we have in common. If the Shrine’s like a museum, does that mean this stuff is valuable?”
She nodded enthusiastically, obviously relieved he wasn’t pressing her about her “tour.” (Yet, he promised himself.) “Oh yeah. We’re talking twenty-four karat treasure—gold, sterling silver and jewels by the pound.”
“That’s bad,” Jack said. “Gene was an Army MP—military police. He enrolled at Catholic because the FBI hires a lot of CUA graduates. If you put that together with the pictures and the way he’s acting, it sounds like he heard somebody was planning to rob the Shrine but couldn’t get a fix on the target.”
The color drained from Rika’s cheeks. “A robbery?” she whispered.
A sneeze from the direction of the pavement sounded like the opossum version of agreement. Gene lurched to his feet, oriented himself toward the Shrine and resumed plodding, seemingly unaware of the fact he wasn’t actually getting anywhere.
Rika didn’t smile at his antics. If anything, she grew more alarmed. The musky tang of kitsune fear overlay the sewer smell of Gene’s faint.
“He’s still trying to get to the Shrine. Whatever’s happening, it’s happening tonight. That’s the only way his actions make sense. We’ve got to call the police.”
“Gene would’ve done that first thing. FBI-wannabe, remember.”
“Then where are they?” She swept her arm in an arc that encompassed the parking lot and the five late-model cars huddled near the softly lit apse. A gust of wind ripped the paper from her hand and sent it cartwheeling in toward the Shrine. “Why aren’t they here?”
“Probably because he didn’t have any proof.”
She pulled out her phone anyway.
“Rika, it won’t do any good. If the cops didn’t believe an ex-MP, they won’t believe us.”
“We have to do something! Those Shrine treasures aren’t just valuable, they’re sacred. They’ve been the object of belief, reverence and concentrated spiritual energy for years. They could’ve turned into true talismans. That’s the magical equivalent of a nuclear reactor. We can’t let that on the street. There are evil sorcerers out there who would use a true talisman to open the portal to a hell dimension just for bragging rights.”
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” he assured her. “But there’s no point calling the cops. They won’t listen to you. They’ll assume they’re being punked. But there are people in this town they have to listen to—and a lot of them know your parents. You need to call them, get one of their political friends on it. Your parents will believe you, and the cops will believe them.”
Hope flared in her eyes, and fizzled an instant later. “Can’t. They’re in Paris with Uncle Five-Tails. They won’t be up for hours. Then it’ll be too late.”
“Then call your brother and have him hack into their address book. You can fake your mom’s voice—though I suggest doing it in the car. It’s getting cold, and if we’re inside, you won’t have to worry about the wind screwing up your illusion.”
Jack held his breath. If she went for it, he might save the evening yet. He’d even figured out how to tether Gene’s leash to the outside of the door.
She shook her head. “There’s no time. But you’re right. The cops need something solid. Well, I’ll give them solid.” She unzipped another pocket of backpack, extracted a blue and gray Hoyas baseball cap and tossed it at him. “You’re going to need this.”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously as she wriggled into the bag’s shoulder straps.
“CCTVs. I’m breaking into the Shrine.” She darted across the lot, pulling up her hood as she ran.
“What? No!” he yelled.
But Rika wasn’t listening. She had the do-gooder bit between her teeth, damn the torpedoes and any look-outs the bad guys might have posted—and nobody to save her except him. Jack yanked the cap over his hair and gave the opossum its head. Gene chittered and wheezed, pushing his stumpy legs faster than they were meant to go. It wasn’t nearly fast enough. By himself, Jack would’ve overtaken her before she reached the first of the two flights of stairs leading to the east portico. With Gene in tow, he was still halfway down the first flight when she veered right across the intervening terrace.
Gritting his teeth and hoping he didn’t get bit, Jack grabbed the opossum by the halter and took the rest of the stairs two at a time. The trees bordering the terrace were shadows on black. A dozen people could be hiding there. All they had to do was stand still. He’d never hear them.
A brass lantern illuminated a descending stairwell tucked against the side of the portico’s upper staircase. At the bottom, directly under the lantern, stood two wooden doors. Rika hunched over their handles, a pair of lock picks glinting in the gloved darkness of her hands. Jack jumped the last four steps into the stairwell. He released Gene’s halter and captured her wrists.
“Stop it,” he whispered hoarsely, praying the shadow of his cap was enough to hide his face from any security cameras. “Wearing black does not make you a ninja.”
She flicked her hands from his grasp. “Being a ninja makes you a ninja. It’s a Zen thing. Back up. You’re in my light. We need to get the doors open.
“No, we don’t.”
“It’s the only solution. The door alarm will buzz security, and they’ll call the cops. All we’ll have to do is run away.” Her arm torqued. “Ah.”
The doors were heavy and far too loud. Rika retrieved her penlight and brandished it at the darkness. He glimpsed a corridor and a matching set of doors before the beam settled on a tiny box mounted on the doorjamb.
“Uh oh,” Rika said.
Despite the comparative warmth of the stairwell, despite his sweatshirt and the long-sleeved tee he wore underneath, he went ice bucket cold. “What?”
“The sensor’s off.” She waved her hand in front of the box.
Gene tried to break for the interior. Jack hauled him back.
“So it’s a silent alarm. Let’s get out of here.”
Rika shook her head. He started to protest. She incinerated him with a glare. “I’m a fox. I can hear the heartbeat of a field mouse sleeping in its burrow under a foot of snow. If the sensor was working I’d hear current humming in the wire. I don’t. The alarm is dead.”
“We’re going. Now.” He grabbed her arm.
A whiff of stale cigarettes tweaked his nose. Before Jack could parse what it meant, a large body landed in the stairwell. An instant later, something cold and hard jabbed the back of his skull. It felt like a gun.
Rika’s horrified gaze angled upward to a point past the top of his head. Gene growled and snapped.
“Control your rat, or he eats the second bullet,” a mechanically distorted voice thrummed behind him.
Oh crap. It was a gun, a gun behind his left ear. Jack couldn’t think past the reality of the gun pressed against his head. Sweat flushed his armpits, worsening his chill. Carefully, oh so carefully, he wound Gene’s leash around his hand until the opossum was forced to heel.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the voice continued.
Rika nodded. She slowly spread her arms to the side. Please, Jack thought as hard as he could, don’t try anything. He can’t miss.
The voice said, “We’re going to the Crypt. Move slowly, or the boy dies.”
Crypt? Jack’s mind yelped. Rika gulped and nodded again.
Cigarette Crook directed Rika to open a pair of doors in the middle of the corridor. “No tricks.”
No kidding. Dim light radiated from the basement of the church, illuminating a short staircase and a passage beyond.
Gene flopped against Jack’s foot. The stink hit a second later. Cigarette Crook didn’t flinch. He must be wearing a mask. None of them had seen his face. They might yet survive. They just had to be smart.
The passage ended in a second, wider flight of stairs, which fed into a stone hall bigger than Jack’s entire dorm. The overhead lights were off, but hard white light blazed from an elevated stone bridge to his left. As he turned for a better look, two sharp barbs dug into his shoulder. His muscles convulsed. Pain exploded inside him—bone-breaking, muscle-shearing, lung-burning, heart-bursting agony. His vision flashed white and black. The world winked out to the sound of Rika’s scream.
* * *
Heaven smelled like incense, beeswax, and polished stone. Jack’s cheek pressed against a slick, cold surface. His mouth tasted like dirt, only drier. Okay, not heaven. He forced his aching eyelids apart. Soft light dappled a glossy stone floor. There were people on the floor—strangers with zip-tied feet and hands bound behind their backs.
Rika!
He struggled to sit up and crashed to the floor, landing on his bruised shoulder. The pain made him want to throw up, but it cleared his head. He was bound like the others. He strained against the zip ties, but the plastic wouldn’t give, and he couldn’t wrestle his arms over his hips. Praying his human clothes wouldn’t dislocate his cat shoulders, he forced himself to shift.
The change left him sore, panting and nearly smothered by his shirts. When he wriggled free, he found himself in a lamp-lit underground church with pews, stands of votive candles and a low vaulted ceiling. He stood in a rectangular space between the back pews and the triple-arched entrance to a darkened side room. The other captives—a chubby, middle-aged man in a black suit and clerical collar, and three guys in the gray trousers, blue jackets and yellow hazard vests worn by Shrine security—lay on the floor between Jack and the votive stands to his right. To his left, past the last opening in the archway, a narrow, gold-tiled alcove framed the mosaic portrait of a black-haired Madonna. One of her cat-like eyes appeared to be winking at an unmoving huddle of black dumped at the entrance to the alcove.
Jack tore across the cold floor. His pulse thundered in his ears. It wasn’t until he crouched next to Rika’s face that her slow, steady heartbeat and the soft sounds of her respiration penetrated the din of his fear. Her scent was a little crisped around the edges, but okay. She was going to be okay. Cat knees buckled in relief.
She opened her eyes. Her lips crooked in a small, lopsided smile. His heart pounded against his ribs as if they really were a cage.
“Pocket,” she gasped. “Nail clipper.”
He nodded and scampered back to his clothes before shifting to human. As he skinned into his pants, he glanced at the back of the church and froze. Three sets of tall glass doors overlooked the hall where he’d been tased. If the bad guys had seen…His heart stuttered. But the hall was empty, and strain as he might, he couldn’t hear anyone shouting or running toward the doors. The only witnesses to his stupidity appeared to be the Madonna and ‘Possum Gene, who was too busy pawing the center doors to notice. Jack ducked behind the pews and scuttled to Rika’s side.
“Left pocket.” Her voice sounded stronger.
He reached into her pants pocket, trying not to think of where he was putting his fingers. A different set of muscles tensed when he saw her hands. The zip tie dug into her gloves. He couldn’t work the clipper under the plastic without cutting something else. He didn’t want it to be her skin.
“Can you shift?”
“Can’t. Tried.”
But her abilities were stronger than his. She could even stop shifting partway.
She must have seen the horror on his face. She moistened her lips. “Need more time. Smaller than you.”
A fierce protectiveness swelled inside him, filling his chest so fast he couldn’t breathe. Rika was slight, small-boned and five inches shorter than him. She was also smarter, her animal was stronger, she had martial arts training, but none of it mattered, because when it came to doing what she believed the right thing, she had no sense of self-preservation. None. And with the terrible clarity achieved in crisis, he knew if he couldn’t keep her safe he would die.
A small part of his mind whimpered he was too young to get serious. Yeah, that didn’t matter either. It was too late. He was doomed the moment she’d rammed a stainless steel tray into the head of a murderous cat sidhe. To protect him. Foxes were supposed to hate cats. Rika had taken him home with her.
He was so screwed.
Thanks to the gloves, her wrists weren’t as bad as he thought. But when she sat up and he saw the bruise on her forehead and the cut on her chin, he wanted to smash something, specifically the thug who hurt her. Jack wasn’t a violent person, but right now he was furious. They’d hurt her.
He fought to say something that wasn’t an angry scream. Eventually he managed: “Anything I can do?”
Rika looked up from massaging her ankles. “I’m okay. Do you see my backpack—it’s got my tablet and all my notes for tomorrow.” Her mouth quirked in a not-quite smile. “You remember: midterms.”
His heart flip-flopped in his chest. Doomed.
He found her backpack in the small storage area behind the votive stands. Someone had popped the plastic catches on the straps, but bag didn’t appear damaged.
Meanwhile, Rika had recovered enough to assume Medical Mode. She crouched on all fours next to the unconscious priest, sniffing his face. He didn’t look too good. Neither did the security guards. Their breathing had a wheezy quality, and their faces were gray, irrespective of skin tone.
“Shocked and drugged,” she whispered. “Ketamine, I think. Our perps weren’t taking any chances. Also, the masked guy who stunned us? Dressed like them.”
He motioned her behind the arches and handed her the bag. “Now we call the cops.”
Rika nodded absently, frowning at her bag like there was more wrong than disconnected straps. She hefted it twice, then dropped it and slapped her phone pocket. She didn’t hit plastic.
“Do you still have a phone?” she asked.
No, he didn’t. He had his ID and wallet, but no cash and no phone. The bastards had stolen it. Of course they had. They were bastards.
Rika wasn’t having any better luck. Pouch by pouch, she removed the contents of her bag to the floor and checked everything twice. She spat, “Those bastards stole my tablet and my phone.”
Jack smothered a reflexive spurt of panic. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to convince himself. “We’ll find a phone when we get out. It’s a public building. There has to be a way out.”
“Ja-a-ack?”
He turned in the direction of her gaze. Light flashed outside the sanctuary’s far door. His heart dropped below his knees. He looked at Rika. She nodded. They grabbed their belongings and retreated deeper in to the gloom.
The flashlight flicked left, right, up, and down—the search pattern of someone who wasn’t looking for anything in particular and didn’t expect to find it. The heavy glass doors splintered the beacon’s glow into the blue white corona of a dwarf star. The person behind it was nothing more than another shadow in the hall. He moved like one, too. Jack couldn’t hear him, or anything else beyond the sanctuary doors.
Luckily the soundproofing worked both ways. The opossum was going nuts, growling and clawing the glass. The patrol didn’t appear to notice. Flashlight and shadow ambled past the doors without breaking stride.
Jack tensed. Was the guy really gone, or was it a fake-out? If he was gone, they needed to find an exit. If he wasn’t, should they try to take him down? If Jack had been on his own, he’d simply flee. But Rika would insist on saving Gene, which wasn’t going to happen unless the damned opossum calmed his damned self down.
“Srrkrreeaachk!” The screech bounced off tile and stone, reverberating into infinity.
Jack grabbed Rika and dropped in a roll, shielding her with his body from the floor and the godawful noise. Through the echoes, he thought he heard a galloping rush of paws, then a thud, followed by the soft snap of a plastic clasp.
He motioned Rika to stay put. Hugging the walls, he scrambled past the cat-eyed Madonna to where the back pews almost met the wall. He peeked around the corner. Caught between the central pair of doors was a familiar leash. Jack craned his neck. The edges of Gene’s broken harness were visible just beyond the door.
Shit.
The rough fabric of Rika’s hoodie brushed his goosebumps. He dragged her back to the alcove. Her dark eyes seemed enormous against the shocked pallor of her face. “How did he do that?”
“I don’t care. As soon as they see him, the bad guys will come running. I’ll distract them. You take my stuff and find a way out. I’ll meet you at the Student Center.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
He grabbed her shoulders. They felt so fragile beneath his fingers. How could he make her understand? This wasn’t judo or aikido or ninja pretend. These were real bad guys, people who electrocuted and drugged their victims, people who would hurt her. One good blow delivered with intent, and her bones would snap. The thought made him ill.
“You have to. You can’t shift. I can.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I can take care of myself.”
“Then prove it. Go.”
She tried to outstare him, but nobody can outstare a cat. Finally she looked away. “I’ll get the door.”
* * *
The glass panel eased shut behind Jack’s feline form with no more sound than a puff of air—air he wished he didn’t have to breathe through a cat’s nose. From the smell and the relative quiet, Gene had fainted again. If Jack could’ve trusted his roommate to play dead like a normal opossum, he would’ve shifted back to human, snatched him and run. Gene’s spells never lasted that long, but every minute he was out was another minute for recon.
Camouflaged by his cat’s brown and white Snowshoe coloring, Jack darted across the shadowed hall and clambered up the second of the three marble statues facing the glass doors of the sanctuary. He peered around the statue’s head. A low-walled wheelchair ramp separated his perch from the elevated bridge. Massive piers framed his view of the center section, where a bevy of high-intensity pole lamps sizzled around a large, peaked display case mounted on a pink, stone-veneered plinth. The glare of their hot, white light made it hard to see inside, but based on the cut-out in the foam-lined equipment chest stationed to the left of the case, Jack guessed it contained the pope’s tiara.
A stocky guy in a priest suit knelt in front of a drawer protruding from the right side of the plinth. The drawer must have held the guts of the case’s security system. Wires streamed from the drawer to a cluttered media cart next to the last right-hand light. An ersatz security guard sporting a latex Richard Nixon mask and blue surgical gloves monitored a laptop on the cart’s highest shelf.
The “priest” lifted his head. He was wearing Kennedy.
“Now?” the ersatz priest asked in a mechanically altered voice.
Nixon responded with a similarly distorted string of letters and numbers. His voice sounded lower than “Father Kennedy’s,” but that could’ve been a function of their voice changers. Neither of them sounded like the guy with the gun—or moved like the guy with the flashlight.
How big was this operation? A chill raced under Jack’s fur as he realized he didn’t know how many people were in the church or their location. The lights on the bridge appeared to be the only ones working outside the sanctuary, but he couldn’t be sure. The basilica was too big. The only thing he knew for certain was he couldn’t let any of them find Rika, not in her present state. She’d tried to hide how weak she was, but he’d seen her arms tremble when she pushed the sanctuary door open.
For her sake he stifled his cat’s primal urge to flee and launched himself at the wall of the ramp. He landed noiselessly, leapt across the incline, wriggled under a spindly guard rail and slunk around the chrome-legged bench set between the center piers.
The uptick in acoustics almost made up for the smell of the dead presidents’ socks. Beyond the thieves’ cryptic exchanges and the hum of their equipment, Jack sensed a faint, regular concussion—the tread of a single pair of soft-soled shoes approaching from the dark beyond the bridge. One pair. Could be worse. Jack flattened himself into the bench’s shadow.
A thin, bluish glow swept the eastern end of the bridge an instant before a guy in a Reagan mask appeared. He was taller and skinner than Nixon or Kennedy. Cigarette Crook? Jack wondered. Reagan didn’t click off his flashlight until he stepped past a dark line of cables that snaked between the two statues framing the end of the bridge. He jiggled the cylinder against his thigh. No, too nervous for Cigarette Crook. He probably startles easily. Good to know.
“You said you were almost done.” Reagan’s altered drone sounded distinctly accusatory.
“I am,” Kennedy snapped. “Almost, as in not finished. In. Com. Plete.”
“But it’s almost two,” Reagan said.
“You got a date?” Kennedy sneered.
Nixon relaxed against the media cart. The pose wasn’t as casual as it appeared. His eyes tracked Reagan’s every twitch. So Nixon was Kennedy’s man. If the situation weren’t so dire it’d be funny.
“No, but I worked security,” Reagan said. “Anytime now, they’re gonna see their camera feed is crap. We won’t even hear them coming.”
“That’s why we have look-outs and Bluetooth. Now shut up and let me do my job. This is an Eighties-vintage standalone system with custom upgrades. In short, it’s a bitch, and the more you distract me, the longer it’ll take to hack,” Kennedy said.
“Sir, yes, sir,” Reagan replied sullenly. He crossed his arms and stared at the west end of the bridge. He didn’t tap his foot, but Jack had an excellent view of the toes flicking against the vamp of his shoe.
Kennedy waited a beat before telling Nixon, “Scope.”
Nixon handed him something that looked like a single-sided stethoscope. He plugged the earpiece into his mask and eased the disk into the drawer. If Jack had been all cat the rat’s nest of wires would’ve been irresistible. It was pretty fascinating from a sapient standpoint. How much force would it take to pull a plug or dislodge a probe? If he jerked some wires free, would it be enough to trigger an alarm?
If he succeeded, would Shrine security believe the alarm or the monitors showing crap? Mental fingers crossed that Rika had listened to him for once, Jack waited for his chance to act.
A single, melodious chime rang from the plinth. Kennedy struggled to his feet, his breath rasping through his distorter. Slowly the case rose from its plinth, supported on metal struts which creaked beneath the weight of the glass.
Jack expected to see silver, but the first flash was gold: the fringed ends of a gold net scarf embroidered with scintillant hammered gold. He squinted against its fierce brightness. It was a relief when the case finally cleared the stand supporting Pope Paul’s tiara.
A spiky gold crown studded with diamonds as big as shirt buttons surrounded the base of a spun silver dome almost twelve inches tall—too tall and too heavy for a human head to bear. In person it looked less like a beehive and more like a giant artillery shell—an image the three jeweled wires circling the dome and the small gold cross at its tip did nothing to dispel. The world’s biggest silver bullet, Jack thought giddily. No wonder Gene went nuts.
But big and unquestionably valuable as the tiara was, the finish was dingy, as if the silver had been mixed with lead and the gold dimmed to match. Jack’s gaze drifted to the scarf that hurt his eyes. It was vivid, vibrant, alive. For all its jewels, the tiara was a husk in comparison.
Superstitious fear ruffled the fur along his back. Half-human Jack didn’t sense magic well, but an ordinary net, even gold net, wouldn’t have snared his attention so completely. He didn’t know where the scarf’s power came from or what it could do. He only knew Rika was right. It couldn’t be allowed to fall into the hands of an evil sorcerer—or any kind of magician. And the scarf wasn’t even on Gene’s radar. He hoped it wasn’t on the crooks’.
Kennedy grunted as he hefted the tiara from its stand. He lowered it into the padded case, carefully arranging the pearl-edged ribbons dangling from the back so they wouldn’t get scratched. Then he returned to the case and reached for the laces tying the gold scarf to the stand.
Shit. Jack couldn’t see any way to stop him. But if he could trip an alarm, Rika would be safe. Sure, they’d go after him, but there was nothing to connect a stray cat with the captives in the church. He wished Kennedy and Nixon weren’t standing so close to the drawer. If he was going to risk his hide, he wanted it to count.
At first he thought the ragged rhythm in his ears was the result of nerves. Then he heard the distinctive thump of naked opossum feet charging up the wheelchair ramp. ‘Possum Gene crested the ramp on the west side of the bridge, shrieking the war cry of his people, ridiculous and magnificent at once.
While everyone else stared, stupefied, Nixon drew a shock baton from under his jacket and strode toward the tiny threat. Gene surged toward his calf, teeth bared and drooling were-spit. With a terrible grace, Nixon evaded the charge. He whipped the baton into the opossum’s flank. Gene screamed and collapsed, convulsing. But Nixon didn’t let go. He kept the stick pressed against Gene’s side until the opossum went limp. The awful smell of charred hair mingled with the stench of voided bowels and worse.
Bile spurted up Jack’s throat. Heart hammering in panic, he struggled to choke it down. He had to keep it in. He couldn’t let them know he was there. If they fried something as stupid and harmless as a ‘possum, what would they do to a cat?
Nixon booted the opossum away from the media cart. Gene’s inert form skidded down the aisle, smearing the floor with his waste.
“Where’d the ‘possum come from?” Nixon’s altered voice sounded bored, callous, utterly indifferent to the pain he’d inflicted on a helpless animal, much less the human within.
All the rage building inside Jack since he’d seen Rika’s bruised face, all the fear and the shame of his helplessness crashed together and exploded. Blood roared in his ears—blood demanding blood. His ears flattened and his fur rose. A strange, unnatural howl spewed from his throat.
He shot off the floor. He scaled “Father Kennedy” in two bounds. He grabbed the back of Kennedy’s mask in his teeth and wrenched it to the side. Before Kennedy or Nixon could react, he leapt into the open drawer and scrambled out the back, tearing wires as he went.
He dashed around the back of the plinth and charged Reagan. Reagan tried to belt him with his flashlight. The blow went wide as Jack dove between his legs. He wheeled and clawed his way up Reagan’s trousers and back. The man yelled in counterpoint to an insistent crystalline pinging Jack barely noticed through his wrath.
His claws raked the back of Reagan’s neck. He bit deep into rubber and flesh.
“Get him off! Get him off!” Reagan screamed.
Jack raced around Reagan’s shoulders and over his head while the man flailed helplessly. As they reeled, Jack glimpsed Kennedy and Nixon shoving plastic slabs under the glass case, which sank much faster than it rose.
Reagan tripped over the cables leading off the east side of the bridge. An ululating klaxon joined the tinny hammering of the display case alarm. He stumbled against the nun statue at the southeast corner of the bridge. The impact knocked the air out of Jack’s lungs. Caught between Reagan and the statue, he fought for breath. Suddenly Nixon stood in front of them. His shock baton shot toward Jack’s head.
“No!” Reagan yelled. He pushed away from the statue, but his balance was off. Instead of dodging, he fell straight at the baton.
Jack twisted as he dropped, slamming shoulder and hip against marble limbs. He was so wired, he felt no pain. He raced up the nun’s marble robes to the top of her habit, and swerved, back arched, teeth bared to confront his foe.
Reagan’s unconscious body slid to the floor. Nixon shoved the baton’s handle into his mask’s mouth, mashing the rubber features into something monstrous. He grabbed the base of the statue and started to climb.
“Stop!” The shout pealed from the hall in front of the sanctuary.
Jack swayed on his perch. Nixon dropped to the floor, angling his body so he could keep both Jack and the new threat in view. Even Kennedy stopped struggling with the laces and turned toward the church.
A black-cowled figure stood in front of the glass doors. The wavering light of a single votive candle kissed the figure’s smooth cheeks, but left the rest of the face in shadow. Damn it, Rika, you’re going to get yourself killed.
“Throw down your weapons,” she ordered.
Two masked thugs burst into the hall from opposite directions. Jack tensed, mapping the quickest route to Rika. But everything happened too fast. The thug who ran in from the east side of the basilica—the same route taken earlier by Jack, Rika, and Gene—slipped and landed on his ass. Rika hurled the still burning votive candle at his mask. He threw himself to the side.
She turned on the attacker bearing down from the west. She hit him with a high kick to the side of his jaw, then spun around behind him and slammed into his back, knocking him to the floor. Rika landed on top of him and dug her thumbs into the sides of his neck. He folded. She yanked the shock baton from under his jacket and jabbed it into his shoulder for good measure.
By now the other thug had staggered to his feet. He eyed her warily from behind a line of burning wax. She lifted the baton and stepped forward. He looked at the bridge, looked back at her, then ran away.
Nixon pulled the shock baton from his mouth. He twisted the base of the stick. Lightning bright sparks crackled between the electrodes. He loped toward the hall.
Jack jumped, shifting in midair. He crashed into his quarry at full human weight. Nixon dropped the baton. It skittered across the floor. Jack got in a couple of punches, but Nixon recovered fast. He bucked, using his greater size and mass to lever them both off the ground. Jack locked his legs around the larger man’s waist and his arm around his throat. Nixon went for his eyes. Jack ducked.
Rika ran onto the bridge and swung her baton at Nixon’s head. But the crook managed to turn at the last minute. She clipped Jack’s arm instead, breaking his hold on Nixon’s neck. He jabbed an elbow at Jack’s knees. Jack shifted and jumped clear.
Nixon reclaimed his baton. Rika danced away.
“I got this,” she yelled. “Stop the priest.”
Jack wanted to argue, but she was wearing a crazy, black-lipped grin filled with sharp canine teeth. Her powers were back. Warmth flooded his chest. Nixon deserved this.
Kennedy cowered against the display case. He’d pushed the damaged mask past his forehead, revealing a pasty, middle-aged baby face drenched in sweat. His lips moved rapidly, but the alarms drowned out the words. His left hand clutched the winking golden scarf to his shoulder. His right hand quivered on the handle of the tiara case as he stared at the brown and white cat stalking, lion-like, toward him.
Jack swaggered just enough.
Kennedy bolted. He was too tall to notice the ‘possum slop or the small body in his path. His left shoe skidded on the muck. The toe of his right hooked under the opossum. He fell across the aisle. His head cracked against a stone pedestal at the far right corner of the bridge.
Jack glanced at Rika. Her chest heaved, but her perspiring face glittered like the golden scarf. She hefted two shock batons. Nixon lay face-down on the walkway.
Jack hurried down the aisle and bent over Gene. The opossum’s condition appeared no better or worse than before.
Kennedy was still breathing. There was a goose egg growing on his forehead but not a lot of blood. Jack double-checked the pedestal to make sure he wasn’t missing anything important, like more blood. The doll-sized bronze statue of a bearded guy seated atop the pedestal peered back at him. The statue winked.
Jack shifted reflexively. It was a mistake. All his bruises, sprains and the adrenalin crash of too much shifting caught up with him at once. He braced his arms to either side of a brass plaque identifying the statue as Saint Peter, the first pope, and eyeballed the saint’s shiny nose.
Despite the ear-numbing yammering of the alarms, he sensed her approach, knew the instant she stood behind him. He shook his head at his own foolishness.
He said, “This church is winking at me.”
“You’re delusional. It’s part of your charm.”
“Only part?” he asked the statue.
“Yeah.”
He glanced over his shoulder. She was staring at him, her gaze traveling the length of his body, so intent it could have been a caress. Part of him was grateful all she could see was his back. An increasingly insistent part of him damned annoyed. Her lips curved in a mischievous smile. Light flared in her eyes.
It flared in the south end of the basilica, blazed over the bridge, and poured over the hall in front of the underground sanctuary as well. Jack blinked, dazzled.
“Oh no,” Rika moaned, “the cavalry.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Not when you’re naked.” She shoved her backpack into his arms. “I’ll stall them as long as I can.”
He tore into the bag. She’d folded everything. This was why he should never get involved with an over-achiever. Why couldn’t she just stuff everything on top like a normal college student? Then he wouldn’t have to dig to China to find his jeans. He yanked them over his hips.
He heard her shouting in the distance, her voice pitched so he could hear what he needed. “They tried to steal the tiara!”
She’d balled his socks! At least they weren’t rammed in his shoes. He shoved his feet into his sneakers.
“They tied us up!”
He’d tie them later.
“I had a nail clipper!”
Crap. He forgot his shorts. Forget it. Where the hell were his shirts? Wait—that flash of cardinal red. He wrestled his sweatshirt from the pouch. His t-shirt sailed across the aisle.
“Then the alarm went off and they started fighting.”
He jerked his sweatshirt over his head. Pulled it over his jeans.
“I don’t know why. We were in the Crypt Church. We couldn’t hear anything. We didn’t come out ‘til we saw the lights.”
He hadn’t noticed before, but the alarms had faded to blips. He heard the opossum gasp. He bundled his were-roommate in his t-shirt and held him protectively.
Two Metropolitan Police officers in riot vests mounted the stairs at the east end of the bridge, guns drawn. Jack braced himself, praying his blue eyes would count for more than his brown skin and kinky hair.
The lead cop halted a foot shy of Gene’s muck. She was tall, gray-haired and built like a Valkyrie. Her right hand lowered the gun. Her left arm swept to the side, wordlessly commanding her colleagues, Rika, and the Shrine guards bringing up the rear to stay back.
Hoping it was true people responded better if called by name, he glanced at her nametag. It read “Pinckey”. He gaped. Pinckey? Pinckey and “the Braen”? Really? What next? Would they try and take over the world?
‘Possum Gene Braen sneezed, spraying the officer’s boots. The good news was if he was sneezing he was probably going to be okay. The bad news was she was a cop, a cop who now had were-snot on her boots.
Her face puckered. “Jesus, kid, what are you doing with that rat?”
* * *
Jack was still pondering her question an hour after dawn when Officer Pinckey booted him, Rika, and Gene out an inconspicuous door on the west side of the Shrine with the warning: “Stay away from the east parking lot. Every kid and their cell phone is there.”
He’d worry about his answer later. Right now, easing the sleepy, t-shirt-draped opossum onto the lawn without dropping him was almost more than Jack could manage.
Rika dragged her backpack to the low wall overlooking the west terrace of the basilica. She sat on the wall and stared numbly at the trees across Harewood Avenue.
Chilled and aching, he slumped beside her. “I can’t believe I have a math test in three hours,” he groaned. “Why the hell did the cops have to ask everything six times? Six fucking times! You don’t think they believed Kennedy about me turning into a cat?”
Rika started to shake. He had a sudden, horrific flashback to the moment in the church when he realized she couldn’t shift.
Teary-eyed, she grabbed his hand. Her features twisted in misery. “You could’ve been killed, and it’s all my fault.” Her voice wobbled into a sob. “I just wanted to see you. I thought we could have fun. Fun!”
She wanted to see him? She wanted to see him. Him!
He folded her into his arms. Somewhere in the sobbing and the patting, the small fists clinging to his shirt and the small perfect body wriggling against his chest, she raised her damp face to his, and he kissed her. The knell of doom pealed inside his head, ringing through every warning, caveat, and dire prophecy in the young single man’s lexicon. His lower brain didn’t care. She kissed back like the world would end if they stopped. This was why he was screwed.
Their lungs demanded air, but their bodies refused to part. Foreheads touching, they shared each other’s breath.
Something rustled in the grass behind the wall. An opossum’s scream deepened into a man’s heartfelt groan. Gene sat up. His stricken gaze bounced from the grass to the church to Jack and Rika sitting together on the wall, and finally to his lap. He emitted a tiny, high-pitched shriek. He snatched Jack’s t-shirt off the grass. T-shirt pressed to his junk, he stumbled to his feet and raced north toward their dorm.
Rika’s gaze never strayed from Jack’s face.
This was why he didn’t care. She was the star around which his world revolved. He threaded his fingers through her silky hair and kissed her again.